


All The Colors

by Dracoduceus



Series: Pride [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: But He's Learning, Echo is a little shit, Exploration of sexuality, Hanzo Shimada is a Little Shit, Hanzo is a polyglot, Hanzo is sheltered, M/M, Miscommunication, background gencio, discussion of and references to homophobia, discussion of and references to racism and xenophobia, eventual mchanzo, exploration of self, gay idiots, specifically Eastern xenophobia/racism toward the West
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25156210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: After leaving the clan, Hanzo learns about himself and the world around him.How do you know if you're really you? Or if you're still just the puppet that you were made to be?
Relationships: Echo & Hanzo Shimada, Echo & Jesse McCree, Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Series: Pride [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822261
Comments: 35
Kudos: 161





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I want to discuss a few things before we move on. 
> 
> This story references a lot of shitty things like homophobia, Eastern xenophobia/racism toward the West, etc. So, warning for that. 
> 
> For a while I wasn't sure about posting this for those reasons. I wanted this to be a story of exploration and an understanding of place in the world. Hanzo is trying to process the "new" world he's found himself in. He's learning to break free from the fabricated world that the Elders had made him believe was true. As a result, he _will_ make mistakes.

With his hands still stained (however metaphorically) with the blood of his family, Hanzo left behind everything he knew.

He still left with more money than the average family might earn in a lifetime, hidden in many hidden accounts in a dozen different names all over the world, but he left nonetheless.

And found himself…woefully unprepared.

For all he had been trained in the traditional arts of ninjutsu, which meant that he had to master many skills, but apparently things like laundry weren’t one of them. In the past he’d had the luxury of getting rid of entire outfits as those kinds of costume changes, while expensive, were covered by the Clan. There was less to tie back to them if the clothes were burned immediately after.

A little old lady took pity on him in a laundromat in Seattle while her husband grumbled that a “real man” ought to know how to do his own laundry.

Shame fizzled in his veins as the old lady walked him through how to load the washer, the dryer, how to fold his clothes. “Then maybe I’m not a ‘real man’,” Hanzo said at last, voice a low, frustrated growl when the old lady’s husband grumbled one too many times about how a “real man” would know how to fold a shirt.

The old man had grunted, completely unafraid. It was another novel—and wholly unwelcome—experience, people not fearing him. He had gone from being one of the most terrifying and influential men in all of Hanamura to being some nobody, a dragon whose fangs and claws had been clipped by his own actions.

Nothing but a worm. A snake. 

“Maybe you’re one of those ‘them’s,” the old man said as if the word itself—innocuous to Hanzo’s understanding, though he was clearly missing something—was something disgusting.

The old lady rolled her eyes. “Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s bad,” she said and Hanzo was amazed that she sounded like she was both reassuring Hanzo and scolding the old man. “It doesn’t mean it’s wrong. God made you just as you are.” She patted his big wrist with one of her wrinkled, frail hands.

He didn’t say that if there were any gods or spirits that loved humans, he would have turned their faces away. Didn’t gods praise the love of family? Filial duty? Didn’t priests and rabbis and all manner of holy people abhor the murder of brothers? Of families? Of _anyone_? He had done all of that and more. Not only had he killed his own brother, but he had murdered all manner of people.

With the very hands that the old woman touched, he had strangled, stabbed, cut, shot—had ended so many lives.

Some of it…he had _enjoyed_ some of it.

He said none of this to her. She took her soft hands off of his wrist and showed him where to fold on the next shirt. The old man said nothing else.

* * *

His next lesson, of all the things that he hadn’t learned, was choosing food.

“When are you making this?” the woman at the farmer’s market asked as she traded his bills for a handful of avocados he had selected. “The big game is this weekend, isn’t it? I’m sure there’s a few riper ones over there.”

Hanzo frowned. “These will be fine,” he said, even though he wanted little to do with the game.

She clicked her tongue. “If you’re sure,” she said dubiously, giving him his change. “They won’t be ready though.”

He hesitated. “They won’t?”

“Have you never chosen avocados before?” she asked kindly, without a trace of mockery. Her nametag said, “Helen”; on the line below it, it read, “she/her”. He pondered that for a moment before answering in the negative.

“I’ve cooked with avocados before,” he explained as she squeezed out from behind the stall to come near him. “But I don’t think I’ve ever done the shopping.”

She patted his arm—what was it with people patting his arm?—and said, “Don’t worry. I’m more than happy to help. There’s a bit of a trick to it.” She bit her lip and looked up at him. Unlike what he was used to, she didn’t seem to be trying to seduce him. Instead she looked thoughtful, bouncing her teeth on her lower lip. “If you haven’t done the shopping, do you know how to choose other produce?”

Hanzo hesitated. In the end, his pride had to take a backseat. “No,” he gritted out.

The shopkeeper smiled. “It’s nothing to be ashamed about,” she assured him. “Not everyone has this luxury. Come on, I’m more than happy to help.”

As if unaware that she was helping a man that had killed—had killed _recently_ , even—she spent more than an hour with him, going over each of the foods at her stall. Tomatoes, garlic, onions, potatoes; beans and cucumbers and squash and herbs.

He recognized all of these foods, after all. World cuisine had been a part of his training—for distance he preferred his bow but up close he preferred the world of poison. But he realized that his training had been so woefully inadequate.

A dusting of this, a drop of that, could be added to ingredients. There was always chaos at a banquet or a large party so all he had to do was find the flavors to know which poison to use.

And if he had to cook, he had the best ingredients already prepared, not everything raw from a little farm stand. He’d never had to check for soft spots, for which ones had been in the sun or had spent too much time in the shade; for ones that might be sweeter or more sour or more ripe or unripe, or how ripe was just right for any particular dish.

“You know flavors but not ingredients,” Helen observed without judgment. “Those meal kits really spoil people. They’re great, don’t get me wrong!” she added with a laugh. “But people forget where their food comes from.”

He hadn’t forgotten, he wanted to tell her. How can you forget something that you never knew?

None of this was said out loud and Helen was kind enough to introduce him to another farmer nearby, who could help him learn more about the produce that Helen didn’t have. “If you come back,” she told him as the new person (whose name tag read “Joel, they/them”) drew him away. “Let me know what you made!”

He wanted to, but it was too dangerous to form habits. It was too dangerous to promise something in case someone lay in wait for him the next time he went to the market.

As Joel showed him different varieties of squash and lettuce and fruits, he found that he _really_ wanted to. Maybe one day.

* * *

He was not hopeless at cooking, at least. The finest chefs had taught him how to cut (and other kinds of masters had taught him how to cut in a very different way) and pare, how to sauté and blanch and broil and sear.

But so many of those recipes that he remembered required high-end items. Fatty duck liver, or quail egg, beef tenderloin, saffron, and cardamom. It required an ingredient list twenty items long and took two days to prepare from scratch.

He brought this up to the sympathetic shopkeeper at a farmer’s market in Quebec. After Helen’s tutorial, farmer’s markets had become his favorite places to visit. More often than not he was able to splurge and get himself some kind of fried sweet as he was getting ready to leave.

It baffled him that someone could be so _friendly_ to a complete stranger.

“I get it,” the shopkeeper said with a sigh. “So many recipes I see online are so fancy! I don’t have the money to buy fresh Madagascan vanilla bean! And I don’t want to buy twenty ingredients to make a five-star pasta dish! Especially if I never use the ingredients for anything else!”

Hanzo nodded somberly. “You understand,” he said.

She shook her head. “I do,” she said ruefully. “Oh, I make something fancy every once in a while, but I have growing boys! They eat too much for me to spend five hours to cook only to watch them eat it all in five seconds. No.” she shook her head adamantly. “Here. Let me give you my recipe. It’s so simple, just four ingredients. I have most of it here, and Jean over there can help you with the rest!” 

When he made it last night, he had just enough for two meals—just enough before he had to leave Quebec after collecting the bounty for his most recent target.

After that, he learned to ask about recipes as he made his visits to the farmers market.

* * *

“Hey, stranger!” Helen cried as he walked up to her stall.

Hanzo was surprised. It was at least three years since he had been there, since she had talked to him about avocados and produce. “You recognize me?”

“Big beefy guy?” she asked. “We talked about avocados, right? Of course I remember.” Her hair had changed since he’d seen her. It was shorter, parted off-center. One side was shaved, the other long; her nametag now read “Julian, they/them”.

He was _sure_ that this was the same person he’d talked to—she even remembered him, referenced their discussions. But he’d never called her “Helen”, except to make note of her name—it had been there, in plain sight, easy to read.

Was she wearing a coworker’s apron? Or did she change her name to Julian?

They caught up and Hanzo was careful not to mention it, but she answered his question without prompting. “I changed my name,” she said, the way one would say that they got married. “It took a while—you know how the government works.”

Hanzo really didn’t but he nodded anyway, sarcastically rolled his eyes as she expected.

“But I think I met you before then, right? It’s Julian now.”

“Okay,” Hanzo said amiably, even though he didn’t understand what or why. He at least understood pronouns—and he supposed that just as Julian was not Helen, they were not “her”. 

“Now,” Helen—no, _Julian_ —said. “What brings you here?”

Hanzo picked up an avocado that was hard as a rock. “I would like to buy this,” he said dryly as he handed it to them. “For guacamole tonight.”

As if possessing some preternatural ability to tell that it wasn’t ripe, Julian laughed before it even touched their hand.

* * *

The streets were a riot of color. Paper streamers still hung from the streetlights, from bushes, from the branches of trees. Plastic and aluminum barricades still blocked the streets and big orange detour signs rerouted traffic everywhere.

Hanzo abhorred the sticky heat and the way his sweat soaked his shirt as he walked along the empty sidewalks. There were volunteers sweeping up trash and they waved at him as he walked past. He hesitated when he saw a news crew, still lingering, but continued when he saw that they were cleaning up and getting ready to leave.

“It was bigger this year,” one of the volunteers was saying as he passed. “For a hot second I thought it would never end!”

“Growing bigger every year,” another volunteer said proudly. “Pretty soon they’ll need to break it up into multiple days! They almost couldn’t line up at the start, there were so many people.”

At the end of the end of the street was a rainbow archway of balloons.

He continued down the street, finding more volunteers cleaning up all of the mess left behind by what must have been an enormous crowd of people. In many ways, Hanzo was happy to have missed it.

Turning down a side alley, he picked his way through a service alley where dumpsters leaked into questionable puddles of greenish sludge. On the other side he found a group of people dressed as if they were about to go to a business meeting.

He checked but none of them matched his target.

“It gets bigger every year,” one of the women said. Unlike the volunteers, she didn’t sound happy about it.

“We can only do so much,” another man said with a weary sigh. “God gave us free will. It is not our fault that they choose to turn from Him.”

Hanzo kept walking. Talk about gods and vengeance made him wary. So many terrible things happened in the name of religion; so many terrible acts, like the death of his brother, were committed by those that had faith in the wrong power. In his mind, why bother? Why have faith in something that may be wrong?

“God tells us that it is our duty to show others the light,” one of the others argued as Hanzo continued to walk. “It is our duty to save their souls from Hell—and to save our children from the blasphemy of the media who cater to—”

He turned a corner and the man’s voice faded away. It was just as well—Hanzo recognized the rising fires of fanaticism. Those kinds of fires hurt everyone around them—allowed someone, or many someones, to cause more harm than good.

Hanzo had seen it many times, and not just with…his brother. Those fires were the catalyst, provided the armor—however imaginary—for people to act.

Faith.

A sin on the world.

Hanzo hunched his shoulders and continued on down the sidewalk. Street sweepers made their hissing, moaning, groaning way down the road cleaning up trash, leaving behind asphalt and concrete made dark with water. There were a few groups of people, laughing as they walked down the sidewalk together.

Just looking at them made Hanzo’s eyes hurt. Three of them were dressed in bright neon colors that caught the late afternoon sunlight and stabbed it back in Hanzo’s eyes. Another wore some kind of flag in pink and blue and yellow like a cape. The last person wore a simple pair of jeans and a shirt with a wolf on it. Arranged over its upturned muzzle was an arc of three circles, each split into patterns that Hanzo didn’t recognize.

For some reason, that person stuck out the most to Hanzo. Their shirt said, “It’s not just a phase.”

The group giggled amongst each other as they passed, paying Hanzo no mind. The one wearing the flag stopped and smiled at Hanzo, who was so surprised that he nodded once at her. She dug around in the hip purse she wore—hidden by the flag—and pulled out a small fake flower. It was a little smashed from being in the purse and she took a moment to smooth over the petals, but she ran over and gave it to Hanzo.

“Happy Pride!” she said when he took it, baffled. Waving, she turned and ran after her friends who had paused to wait for her.

Hanzo looked down at the flower pinched between two fingers. It was a simple thing that someone had likely sat down to do. Green tape covered a thin wire that served as the stem; its petals were made of some kind of foam in a rainbow of colors.

It looked like a rose and Hanzo marveled at how tiny it appeared against his big palm that had been callused by years of combat.

He should throw it away but something in him told him to keep it. After making sure that it didn’t hold any unpleasant surprises, he coiled the thin wire around one of the zippers on the guitar case that hid his bow from sight.

Looking at it late one night, he decided that he rather liked the little pop of color against the plain black canvas.

* * *

Hanzo peered at the painting, a recreation of a mural that had been found in an ancient tomb hundreds of miles away.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” a woman beside him asked. She was older, old enough that her eyebrows and eyelashes—the only hair that Hanzo could see—were all silver, but she still moved like a hunter.

“I am used to a different kind of art,” Hanzo admitted. “I don’t know that I see quite the same thing as you but…it certainly is remarkable.”

The woman clicked her tongue. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see that she wore a dark blue scarf over her hair. The eye closest to him had a black tattoo like some of the symbols he had seen in the dimly lit museum. “Still so closed-minded.”

She was right—and he knew it.

“It’s hard to shake a lifetime of learning,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’m trying.”

“I can see that,” she said and he knew that she was looking at the rainbow flower that was hanging from a chain attached to his pants. It was in fashion in London, where he had just come from. “A rainbow flower?”

Hanzo grunted, looking at the hieroglyphs, at two-dimensional paintings of dancers and kings. Fishermen floated along the river in boats made of bunches of reeds—according to the plaque—and hunted water horses.

“Quite unusual,” the Shrike said.

Hanzo told himself that the fact that she didn’t pry was the only reason that he said, “I’m sure there’s a meaning behind it that I’m missing. I was in…” he’d already forgotten. Perhaps it had been Philadelphia; maybe New York or Albany. “A city,” he said lamely. “After a parade. The girl that gave it to me wished me a happy pride.”

Beside him, the Shrike wheezed in laughter. “Don’t say that too loudly here,” she cautioned through stifled guffaws. “It’s still frowned upon.”

“What?” Hanzo asked. “What is?”

The Shrike shook her head and they moved on down the display. On a nearby stand, a bluish hologram of a large pleasure boat—complete with slave rowers and a throne at the middle of the deck—rocked on a clear aquarium filled with holographic fish, water horses, and crocodiles.

“Some don’t like it,” the Shrike cautioned quietly. “So you should be careful with that. But a tiny symbol like that shouldn’t matter much.”

“Why don’t some like it?” Hanzo wanted to know just as quietly. “Is it bad?”

“It’s only bad to their image of their gods,” the Shrike said under her breath. “It’s bad to those that preach love in one breath and demand death to those that don’t follow them in the next. We like to believe that this is the future and that we have dramatically distanced ourselves from our…less that perfect past but we haven’t. Not yet.”

They moved on through the exhibit, walking through a simulated temple. There were cracked stone tablets on display behind glass and they paused to look at the inscriptions that had been carved there thousands of years before.

“Do you not know what it means?” the Shrike asked as they left the museum. “Still?”

Hanzo made a face. “No,” he admitted.

“Adorable,” the Shrike said. “But you answered your own question—you know the name of the event. From there you can do your research.” She shook her head. “Not here, though. Be careful.”

He watched her walk away for a moment before going his own way. A quick trip allowed him to pick up his bags—he’d been unable to carry his instrument case around—and flagged a cab to find his way to the ferry.

In Crete, after a long day’s trip across the Mediterranean Sea, Hanzo settled down in his rented room and searched “pride parade US”—because he was sure that he had been given the little rose in the United States—and found pages and pages of information.

* * *

Hanzo stared over the water at the distant Rock. It rose like the prow of a sinking ship from a sea of picturesque blue and he wondered if he was dreaming or if this place might actually be real.

But…

He looked down at the token cupped in his palm. It was scratched and worn and faded with time, but the symbol was still clear.

Overwatch.

A crew member approached and he tucked the token into his sleeve. “We’re about to hit some chop,” the man said in Spanish. “We recommend that you go into the saloon so you don’t go flying off.”

Chuckling—the crew member pretended that one hand was the deck and two of the fingers of his other hand were Hanzo, and made “Hanzo” go flying into the air in an exaggerated arc—Hanzo nodded and began walking below deck. “I suppose it wouldn’t be a good day to go for a swim,” he said in the same language.

“Muscles like that? My money’s that you’d sink like a rock,” the crewman told him.

Hanzo laughed and was surprised that he would do so. When the crewman walked away, Hanzo’s eyes lingered on his back, on the way that his shoulders filled out his uniform. Since his talk with the Shrike he had deeply thought about what he had learned about Pride. 

It put a lot of things into context. The flags; the religious people he had seen. 

He had been unsurprised of the disapproval. Many times the elders had talked about the West with disgust and had referenced homosexuality as one of the reasons for their hatred. It was cliched and yet…

...yet, as terrible as it was, he could understand. Hatred took a lot to unlearn, especially in a land as steeped in tradition as Japan. 

As much as he loved his country...he also felt sorry for them. Look at how he had grown in just a few short years! Granted he had reason to, had reason to _want_ to. He had been exposed to so much more simply by observing. By being a part of the world instead of hiding away. 

Instead of secluding himself as he had once done in his youth. 

That wasn’t fair, though. There were many that pushed the boundaries; there were also many that sought to keep things As They Always Were. 

At the same time, just as he had learned that there was a whole other world outside of the stories that the Clan had fed him, he was certain that there was more to Japan than he knew. Though the Elders may have frowned on it, he was sure that there wasn’t the hatred that he was so often led to believe. 

So Hanzo let himself look at the sailor. Let himself wonder if he was attracted to him. 

No, he decided. He supposed that the man was attractive _enough_. He had the looks that many would describe as “rugged”—what many would say was irresistible and handsome. Hanzo thought that he might like the man’s light eyes in contrast with his dark hair and olive complexion. 

But he wasn’t attracted to him. 

Despite that conclusion, Hanzo felt...disappointed. He still felt unsure. 

There was a world of identities that he didn’t understand even now. That could come in time. Time and practice. 

Sighing, he sat down on the narrow bench in the boathouse of the ferry and tried not to look at the token hidden in his hand. The problem of identities and sexualities could be addressed another time. 

Through the windows, Hanzo watched the Rock, and its white cliffs loom ever closer. 

* * *

Genji was there to greet him, as was a gorilla who introduced himself—in human speech, not in sign language as he expected—as Winston. 

Hanzo tried not to think about scarring and how sticky blood felt on his hands. Unable to say why, he hid the rainbow flower from Genji. 

He hardly knew who he was anymore. How could he know what he was attracted to—if anyone? Did he deserve that after what he’d done to Genji? 

To the rest of their family? 

So he stayed silent, hid the flower, and wondered why it made him feel so sad. 

* * *

More operatives showed up. Male, female, omnic. 

Hanzo looked at them, unsure what he was looking at, what he was looking for. 

Reinhardt was an enormous mountain of a man. Even given Hanzo’s attention to his physique, he didn’t hold a candle to Reinhardt. The man was friendly, though understandably distrustful of Hanzo. Like the sailor on the ship, he was attractive in the big beefy sort of way, but he was of no interest to Hanzo. 

Dr. Angela Ziegler, a renowned surgeon. Brains and beauty, she was one of the ones that had rebuilt Genji’s body. Seeing her, Hanzo expected to feel some sort of attraction but...he didn’t. 

Dr. Zhou Mei-Ling. A Chinese climatologist. She had a round, friendly face. Seeing him, she had been terrified. 

He had no interest in entering any kind of relationship with his teammates, of course. But suddenly having the words—gay, straight, bi—made him wonder what category he fell under. A part of him was distressed that he didn’t find any of them attractive.

They were all attractive—the women were beautiful, even if he felt like a dirty old man to think that, and the men were all handsome—but he found nothing in their looks that interested him. Oh, he was interested in other ways—Dr. Zhou was always open to discuss the skies and the seas and the mathematical laws that governed nature and Reinhardt’s young armorer Brigitte knew enough of traditional forging and blacksmithing methods that they once spent the entirety of Reinhardt’s armor fitting discussing forges and crucibles and draws and steel types, much to the former Crusader’s chagrin. Though Dr. Ziegler had little interest in being _friendly_ with him, she still listened to his input and knew about anatomy—and how to move her body—that when he gave her suggestions with using her body weight to her advantage with her Valkyrie suit, she knew what he was suggesting and was willing to try it out.

Reinhardt was friendly, and though at first appeared to be the stereotypical grunt with few thoughts in his head, had a surprising eye for strategy. He preferred the straightforward approach—charge in and wildly swing his hammer—but he knew the benefits of changing his plan of attack. As with many people on base, Hanzo had to really work to beat him at chess.

It was refreshing.

It was frustrating.

More than once he’d seen them in various states of dress. The ladies liked to do yoga in the mornings and dressed down to tights and sports bras as they slowly moved to the instructions of the instructor on the screen. Hanzo had snuck peeks of them and found no interest in them. Watching Reinhardt flex, shirtless and in tight shorts, had similarly no affect on him.

He supposed rather ruefully that there weren’t many to test his…hypothesis? Reinhardt was the only human male on base aside from Hanzo himself. He supposed that he couldn’t rule that out.

There was Genji, of course, but he wasn’t about to go there.

As if some wonderful or terrible cosmic power had heard his thoughts, the pilot, Tracer, brought more operatives. Among them was a young woman (an e-sports celebrity and military hero that even Hanzo recognized), a young man (a famous musician and vocal opponent of Vishkar in Brazil), and a diminutive man that Brigitte introduced as her father.

“Hey, man,” the young man said to Hanzo, as if completely unaware of his past. He held out a hand to shake and Hanzo, perplexed, took it. “Nice to meet you! I’ve heard so much about you!”

Hanzo wondered why his hand tingled when he let go of the man’s hand. “You can’t have heard the truth,” he said dryly.

This seemed to amuse the young man. “Name’s Lúcio,” he said, as if the world didn’t already know his face. “I’m going to be one of the medics.”

“Oh,” Hanzo said awkwardly.

Lúcio moved on, going to shake everyone’s hands as vigorously as he did Hanzo’s. Turning back to the other celebrity—Hana “D.Va” Song, MEKA pilot and e-sports champion—Hanzo found her looking at him with her arms crossed. It seemed that she did not share Lúcio’s enthusiasm.

It was sad that such open distrust was almost refreshing after the musician’s blasé attitude toward his past.

He bowed slightly to her in greeting and was surprised that she bowed back slightly. They said nothing to each other, bowing again when formally introduced, and she moved on.

“I don’t trust people like him,” he heard her say later that night as he was cleaning his dishes after dinner. “You know the kind.”

“My brother is a changed man,” Genji said and Hanzo wondered if he ever got tired of making excuses for Hanzo. He wished that Genji would just stop. They were all professionals there—they might not like each other, but they would work together.

Agent Song huffed. “Yeah,” she said sarcastically, likely unaware that Hanzo could hear her. “I’m sure he is. Look, I’ll work with him; I just don’t have to like it. So don’t expect us to be best friends.”

Done with his dishes, Hanzo left.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes even the most well-meaning can be wrong.

“Hanzo is not the person to send this event,” Agent Song said hotly. “You need to send someone else.”

Commander Winston peered at her with his inhuman, golden eyes. “There are a lot of reasons that Agent Hanzo was chosen,” the gorilla said with quiet dignity. “And it would be impossible to send someone in his place, short-staffed as we are.”

Hanzo stood stiffly to the side, wishing that he was anywhere but there. Agent Song spun to him, hate in her face. “I _refuse_ ,” she said. “I will _not_ go on this mission with you.”

He said nothing, knowing that if he did she would only use it to hate him more. Right now, she was looking for an excuse. She’d find it in his silence, but better hate that he refused to answer than hate if he tried to defend himself.

“Agent Song,” Commander Winston said after a nervous look at Hanzo. “You agreed to join Overwatch and put yourself beneath my command. We have been very flexible with authority here, but in this I must step in as commander. Will I have to make this an order?”

“Yes,” Agent Song hissed. “Because that will be the only reason I go into the field with _him_.”

A long moment of silence. Agent Tracer coughed awkwardly. Lúcio looked back and forth between Agent Song—his good friend—and Hanzo, his face creased with a worry that baffled Hanzo.

“Very well,” Commander Winston said. “I hereby order you, as Strike Commander of Overwatch, that you will be assigned to this mission. You _will_ conduct yourself with the dignity that befits you as a member of this _team_ and with the professionalism that befits the Korean military and its MEKA division.”

Despite himself, Hanzo was impressed. Commander Winston knew just where to hit her; Agent Song gritted her teeth and Hanzo knew that she blamed him for Winston’s words.

Hanzo bowed to Commander Winston when he was dismissed and walked stiffly out of the room. Footsteps behind him proved to be Lúcio, who slapped his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll come around.”

Hanzo doubted that but said nothing. The last time he had expressed his disbelief that Lúcio didn’t hate him, he had really upset the musician.

“Do you need help preparing?” Lúcio asked. “We can run into town if you want. I’d offer to let you borrow some of my clothes, but I don’t think they’d fit.”

Hanzo looked down at his shirt, a plain black tee. “I will wear a compression shirt to hide my tattoo,” he decided. “But I would appreciate your input for anything else.”

Laughing, Lúcio slapped his shoulder again. “Great! I’ll talk to Winston about it and we can head out! Meet you in the motor pool?” without waiting for an answer, the musician spun and skated away.

As if waiting for Lúcio to leave, his shadow appeared at his side. “Will you be okay to go?” Genji asked with a concern that was beginning to irk Hanzo. “I know it’s not what you’re used to.”

“In what way?” Hanzo asked flatly.

There was an awkward pause. “You don’t like crowds,” Genji said. “And this isn’t like the festivals back home.”

Hanzo wondered if Genji would come out and say it directly. The Shrike’s unwillingness to discuss it was understandable given their location and the laws still in place in Egypt. Genji not wanting to discuss it here, despite their briefing, seemed strange to Hanzo. 

His reluctance confused Hanzo but he also didn’t want to know why. 

“It will be fine,” Hanzo told Genji, feeling a strong sense of deja vu. He remembered all the times that he had tried to stop Genji from going out and partying and how Genji had said the same thing back to him. 

He wondered if it was some kind of omen. 

“Will it?” Genji demanded. 

“It will,” Hanzo decided and walked away. 

“You’ll be uncomfortable,” Genji argued. 

Privately, Hanzo wondered if Genji thought that he was comfortable _now_. He did not say this, though. Instead he said, “It will be alright, Genji. You know that this is important.” 

There was a few minutes of silence and then the hissing of Lúcio’s skates approached. 

* * *

“You okay, man?” Lúcio asked, having to raise his voice and lean close in order to be heard over the murmur of thousands of voices. The parade hadn’t even started yet and the music and festivities hadn’t even reached their crescendo and yet even the dull murmur of thousands of people speaking to each other, preparing, coordinating, pressed in all around. They echoed off the shiny glass windows and concrete buildings around them, amplifying a thousand to a million.

It was well-known around the Watchpoint that Hanzo hated crowds, hated anyone close to him. Sometimes it was difficult for people to walk next to or behind him without him becoming skittish.

Lúcio knew that it had to be hell for him and Hanzo appreciated that he tried to be discreet about his worry but discretion did not exist in a crowd this large.

In truth, Hanzo didn’t quite know what to feel. _This_ was what he had missed in that half-remembered walk. _This_ had been the source of the colored streamers, popped balloons, paper confetti strewn all over the roads and sidewalks and nearby bushes and trees. This was the life behind it, a living and breathing crowd celebrating themselves—celebrating identities that some people didn’t want to acknowledge.

He felt like an interloper, not sure of what he was— _who_ he was. He found himself worrying about silly things—what if he didn’t belong?—and it frustrated him.

When Lúcio helped him choose clothes for the mission, Hanzo had worried that it wouldn’t be enough. Deep in the dark, abandoned storage rooms of the marketing department they had found the old promotional shirts for Overwatch. Some of them had still been sealed—somehow—and in good enough condition, even if they needed to be washed and soaked in soap four times.

Four times just to get the smell of dust out of the old fabric.

_The world could always use more heroes_ , the black shirt said. The Overwatch logo was a bold declaration on one of the sleeves, and present in a subtle grey behind the faded words.

Lúcio had assured him and anyone that had asked that such shirts were common—they were collectors’ items, and he had seen knock-offs all the time. It would not be out of place here.

He wore a pair of jeans that the musician had insisted were just the right amount of too-tight and a pair of chains that looped from his belt loops to a false wallet in his pocket. To cover his tattoos, he wore a white compression shirt whose collar peeked out from beneath the shirt and extended down to his wrists.

When he had seen Hanzo in it, Lúcio had whistled appreciatively. “Is that bad?” Hanzo asked.

“No,” Lúcio had told him with a little laugh. “Not bad at all.”

Now Hanzo looked out over the crowd and found others dressed like him: a simple tee, plain jeans. He had allowed Lúcio to paint his nails and Agent Tracer had (somewhat reluctantly) helped him to trim his hair into something more manageable.

Privately, in the comfort of his own room, Hanzo thought that he liked the new style, liked having the greys at his temples dyed and the flyaway strands from haircuts without proper clippers evened out.

Here he saw people with plain hair, with dyed hair, with elaborate wigs. He saw people without makeup, with makeup, with their faces painted in a rainbow of colors. Cars and trucks were decorated, some dragging trailers with people waving flags and fans and streamers.

It was overwhelming and yet…Hanzo thought that it felt strangely not. Everyone wore a smile that didn’t feel fake. There were people joking, people dancing, people throwing beach balls and balloons over the heads of the crowd.

He recognized some of the flags, such as the one that Lúcio wore. Pan. There were the white-grey-purple-black flags of the asexual spectrum but he couldn’t yet distinguish which pattern represented which identity. He saw rainbows everywhere, some of the flags representing lesbian pride. Others were beyond him, concepts that he did not yet comprehend.

“You okay?” Lúcio asked. He had shaved for this and his signature dreads were covered by a rainbow bandana. Today instead of his skates, he wore a pair of prosthetic legs that disguised his height.

Hanzo was surprised that he’d asked. He looked out over the crowd of people. “I am fine,” he said.

“I think I see Hana over there,” the musician said and grabbed Hanzo’s hand. “Come on.”

He felt that tingle again. Was this attraction? he wondered as he looked down at their clasped hands. No, he decided. It probably wasn’t—it was just the novelty of being touched so casually by someone that knew of his sins.

Lúcio tugged him through the crowd and belatedly, Hanzo realized that the omnic standing next to Agent Song had to be Genji. He had switched out his faceplate for something smoother, something that made him stand out less than his typical armor. Looking into Genji’s smooth faceplate, now looking more like Zenyatta’s, Hanzo was surprised at how unnerved he was.

His armor was painted in colors to match Lúcio’s. Pan. Hanzo wondered if he should feel anything about that. He only felt envy—was only envious for Genji’s self-awareness, his ability to know himself so intimately and be able to say “this is so”. 

Agent Song eyed Hanzo with a curl in her lips. She wore a pair of shorts with a tulle skirt that draped like a cape behind her in shades of white, blue, and pink. Her hair was braided with pink, blue, and white ribbons, her bangs held back with a beret in the shape of a flag with those colors.

“I’m surprised you showed up,” she said and popped her gum. “This seems like the last place I’d see someone like you.”

Hanzo frowned at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Genji asked sharply before Hanzo could. Once more, he wondered if Genji ever grew tired of making excuses for him, for defending him from well-earned distrust.

“You know,” Agent Song said unrepentantly. “The ultra-conservative traditional types. The kind that hates people like this.” She waved a hand as if to encompass the entirety of the parade.

Genji obviously struggled with dismay, cutting nervous glances to Hanzo and then back to Agent Song. It seemed that he had finally found the limit that he was willing or able to defend Hanzo. He was surprised that there was one, given how zealously Genji had previously tried to speak up for him.

“People can change,” Hanzo said simply.

Agent Song popped her gum. “Uh-huh,” she said and turned away from him. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

They followed the edges of the parade route, squeezing past throngs of people. Humans and omnics, some painted in every color and some not painted, packed the streets and sidewalks. There was cheering and dancing and so many pictures.

Confetti and streamers fell from the sky and candy, thrown by people on the various floats, skittered over the sidewalk. Some people walked beside the floats instead of riding on them, handing out rainbow flags and beads and other little fun things.

“ _It feels wrong to be working like this at Pride,_ ” Agent Song said over the comms. Genji and Lúcio had cut across the parade and were paralleling them on the other side.

“ _It feels wrong that in this day and age, someone has enough hate to protest this,_ ” Genji said. Over the heads of the crowd, Hanzo could see the signs of protesters in the alleys and sides streets lining the parade route.

He didn’t need to see what was on the signs to know their intent. Lúcio didn’t say anything to Genji over the comms. Likely he, like Hanzo, knew that as long as there were people in the world, there would always be hate.

They continued on the route. Four people were not enough to do such an exhaustive search, but they weren’t meant to be the sole heroes, just supplementary. Hanzo could see other security officials moving along the crowd. All of them were looking for the same threat.

Ahead of him, Agent Song paused at a crosswalk. The throngs of people had stopped crowding here for some reason, and now Hanzo could clearly see to the aluminum barricades lining the walkway.

They paused there to pretend like they were part of the crowd and not searching for threats. Hanzo noticed that there were groups of people leaning over the barricades with their arms outstretched as if they were at a concert trying to touch the sleeve of their idols. They had signs, some hanging over the barricades, some on their shirts, some held by others over their heads.

There was another such group in front of them and by chance one of them turned around, turning the sign with her. The woman holding the sign looked to be in her forties, but Hanzo thought that the woman she stood beside was probably in her seventies.

The older woman sat like a queen, her black and silver hair neatly pulled back and pinned in place with a hair clip adorned with rainbow ribbons. Though she was dressed in a cotton tee and faded jeans, she sat as if she was dressed in finer clothing. Both of her gnarled hands were folded austerely over her cane and her wrinkled face split into a smile as the woman holding the sign bent to speak to her.

By chance, the sign turned toward Hanzo and he could clearly read what it said in neat letters, cut from rainbow paper: _You’re not alone. We’ll be your family. Free Asian Mom and Grandma Hugs_.

As if by chance or driven by something greater, the older woman turned and her eyes crinkled as she smiled at Hanzo. She pushed herself to her feet, wobbling a little as she caught her balance—the woman holding the sign caught her elbow and steadied her as she adjusted her grip on her cane—before taking a few steps toward Hanzo.

Swallowing hard, no longer caring about what Agent Song might think, he stepped toward her as she extended her arms. He hunched his shoulders and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his. One of her gnarled hands reached up and pet the back of his head. 

“ _Oh, my grandchild,_ ” the old woman said in Korean. “ _Oh my grandchild. I’m so proud of you._ ” 

Hanzo’s breath hitched and his hands balled into fists. He heard the other woman holding the sign put it aside. She approached and gently wrapped an arm around Hanzo, the other patting his forearm. “ _My child,_ ” she said in Korean. “ _I’m so proud of you._ ” 

Closing his eyes, Hanzo took a deep breath, and then another. The little Korean grandmother hugged him tight. “ _Oh my grandchild,_ ” she said again. “ _Oh, my grandchild. I’m so proud of you._ ” 

He thought about the many things that he’d never heard that he didn’t know that he needed to hear. That he wanted to hear. 

Validation of his worth. 

Acceptance of himself. 

Tucking his head into the old woman’s neck, he found himself crying for the first time since he killed Genji. 

* * *

Agent Song didn’t warm up to him, but there was something thoughtful in her gaze whenever he caught her staring.

That was all put aside when a new agent arrived on base.

Agent Echo was welcomed by most of the old guard with gusto—except Genji. “We never got along well,” he admitted to Hanzo, though he hadn’t asked. The both of them watched Echo greet the rest of the team from the comfort of the rafters.

These days, Hanzo could stand to sit next to Genji like this, their legs hanging over the edge. He couldn’t help but think that it was like old times, hiding from their instructors in the highest areas of the dojo and around the Castle, eating candy that they had snuck past the guards.

“She made me uncomfortable,” Genji admitted. “That’s why I didn’t like her. She was made by a scientist who had worked with Omnica.”

“Is that why you didn’t like her?” Hanzo asked.

Echo floated, spinning in midair using teardrop-shaped “wings” serving as rudders, like the fins of a porpoise as it swam through the water. She seemed excited to be there, happy to see her friends again. Hanzo wondered what that might feel like.

“No,” Genji admitted. “At first I was…uncomfortable because of that. But it’s because of her…tendency. She is called ‘Echo’ for more than one reason.” Hanzo made a curious sound and Genji gave what might be a laugh. “She is an ‘echo’ of her creator,” he explained. “And she has a…tendency to mimic people.”

From the pause, Hanzo had the feeling that Genji had wanted to say something else.

Hanzo’s questions were answered a moment later when, in a flare of blue and white light, Echo’s shape changed. The force field that mimicked a human face spread, her “fins” tucked inward, and a perfect copy—albeit all in the same blue as her face—of Agent Tracer stood in front of the real agent.

She said something—Hanzo could not hear exactly what—but it was in an eerie two-tone voice, her voice on top of a perfect mimicry of Agent Tracer’s.

“You see what I mean,” Genji said. “She means well, though.”

Hanzo hummed.

Below, Commander Winston caught sight of them and waved for them to come down. Genji pushed himself off of his perch, falling and landing with a loud _THUMP_ on the hood of Agent Song’s MEKA.

As she and the mechanics working on it began to scold Genji, Hanzo stood and began to make his way down with more decorum. He tried not to think about how Genji had never looked before he leaped but he had also never given any sign that he was sorry for the damage he’d cause in the aftermath, as he was now.

“—Agent Shimada,” Echo was saying when Hanzo emerged from the stairwell. She was back in her own form, white fiberglass and blue fields. If she stood, Hanzo guessed that she’d be about Genji’s height but with the way she floated she had to bend to shake his hand in both of hers.

“You need to be careful,” Genji said, sounding amused despite his earlier admission that she made him uncomfortable. “There are two ‘Agent Shimada’s now.”

Echo turned to Hanzo and smiled. The human face she mimicked—or whose features she had chosen for herself—was surprisingly pretty, though the glowing blue and the high “forehead” as it faded into her helm was a bit unnerving.

“Facial recognition shows enough similarities that you are closely related,” she said pleasantly. She held out both of her hands to shake Hanzo’s. “I am Echo. What may I call you?”

Hanzo shook her hands with a slight bow—a compromise that he’d been making lately when these Westerners insisted on shaking hands. “Agent Hanzo.”

“This is my brother,” Genji said, looping an arm around Hanzo’s neck.

If Echo knew the full story of what had happened to Genji, she gave no sign. Instead she smiled slyly at Hanzo, the “skin” around her eyes crinkling. “Then I must extend my apologies,” she said. “For being related to such a menace.”

Hanzo surprised himself—and Genji, and many around them—by laughing. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Echo flipped over Hanzo’s hand, which she still held in both of hers. She ran her fingers over his scarred knuckles. “I would like to speak with you later, if you are open to it,” she said. “Just the two of us. I am…curious about you.”

Beside them, Genji made a strange, wheezing sound; Agent Tracer sputtered and started coughing.

Echo’s smile was sweet and innocent, making Hanzo wonder if she knew the implications her words had. But there was a wicked curl to her lips and with her next words, Hanzo knew that she knew exactly what she was doing. “Unless you would rather that I explore my curiosities with others present.”

Wicked thing.

He immediately liked her.

“Perhaps first privately,” Hanzo suggested, allowing his voice to drop lower. Echo laughed, letting go of his hand to clap hers in front of her. “And then…perhaps we can do so in a more public setting. If you are amenable, of course.”

Commander Winston coughed awkwardly. “Alright. Um…so Echo, shall we give you a tour of the base? We can get you set up in your own private quarters?”

Echo laughed and spun, her “wings” flaring behind her like skirts. “Yes Winston, thank you. I am interested to see how the base has changed since I last read the schematics.” To Hanzo she said, “And I will see _you_ later, Shimada- _san_.” She bowed and Hanzo bowed back.

“I will count the minutes until our reunion.”

After that, Commander Winston couldn’t hurry her out of the hangar fast enough.

“Hanzo,” Genji said when they had left. “What the _fuck_ was that?”

Turning, Hanzo found that Genji had taken off his mask in order to give Hanzo a very judgmental look. He wondered if that was what he used to look like when he reprimanded Genji all those years ago. No wonder Genji had never been able to take him seriously.

The thought made him smile. “It seems that I have a date later. Brother.”

He heard Genji cursing quietly to himself as he left and that kept the smile on his face until he made it to the empty barracks.

* * *

Echo found him later, covered in dust, on top of the comm tower. Perhaps she understood hard lifestyles because she gently announced her presence and held out the zip tie that he was reaching for.

With her help, he secured the bundle of wires and began digging around in the junction box. They worked in relative silence, only speaking to request tools or talk out solutions to the problems presented in the corroding wires.

“It’s getting late,” Echo observed some time later. Her pretty white plating was streaked with black and grey up to her elbows. “Shouldn’t you go in for dinner?”

Hanzo grunted. “I’ll eat when I’m done with this.”

“When there is nobody else there,” Echo observed and when he looked at her, she smiled. “Will you eat if I bring you a plate of food?”

He grunted. “You don’t need to feed me,” he said, gruffer than he intended.

“I don’t _need_ to,” she agreed. “But I don’t want you to go hungry because the team disapproves of an ex-yakuza leader being among them.” Hanzo didn’t say anything but evidently Echo didn’t need him to. She rose into the air—as if standing from a sitting position—and brushed dirt off her body. “I’ll be back.”

Shaking his head, Hanzo returned to inspecting the wires.

“I hadn’t been lying earlier,” Echo said later, sitting—as well as she was able to with her large “wings”—beside him as he ate. “I am curious about your experiences. Although…I hope you understand…”

“You were joking about the innuendo,” Hanzo finished for her. There was still soot under his nails but he’d eaten in worse condition—and the sandwich that Echo had made him was very tasty. “I was joking as well.”

Echo smiled. Her face shone even as the sun began to set and their work area began to fall into shadow. “I have contemplated it—sexual exploration with a human—but I admit that the thought…does not appeal to me. Not even sexual exploration in the way of omnics.”

Hanzo resisted the urge to ask about omnic sex. It wasn’t any of his business and it certainly wasn’t something he had considered until Echo had mentioned it. If omnics were “human” enough to gain their own identities, then why not pleasure as well?

Much like wondering about others’ sex lives, it was simply not something that Hanzo wanted to consider.

(Although he wondered if this was a product of his upbringing, thinking that such things were shameful, or if he was being polite. Or prudish, as Genji liked to tease.)

Hanzo took another bite of his sandwich. “I understand,” he admitted.

She smiled at him. “I’m glad,” she said. “Are you opposed to me asking you questions?”

“About what?”

Echo tried to pick up a pebble on the sidewalk. The field that formed her fingers brushed against the concrete and he watched tiny sparks drag in their wake. “I understand if it is a sensitive subject for you,” she said softly. “So do not feel obligated to answer.”

He looked at her. The happy, cheerful persona she had adopted earlier was gone, replaced with a serious and pensive expression. “We will not know until you ask,” he pointed out.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I know…what happened with Genji. I know his story, I know the ‘official’ story. But I don’t know…what might have led to it. I don’t know…there is a lot that I don’t know.” She held her hands out in front of her. As the shadows continued to grow, her blue “flesh” lit up more of her white armor. “I was designed to be self-learning,” she told Hanzo. “As all AIs are. Dr. Liao wanted to prove that there can be compassion in something, even if they were designed by human hands—even if they evolved into something that wasn’t in their original blueprint.”

“I can’t imagine that I would be of any help to you,” Hanzo told her. “If you’re trying to understand humanity. I’m told that that is one thing that I lack.”

Echo turned and smiled at him. He thought of the way that the old lady had smiled at him during the parade. She smiled at him like she wasn’t pretending, like she saw him and acknowledged him. Like he mattered.

He looked away, trying and failing to swallow the lump in his throat.

“If that is true,” she said. “Then perhaps we can learn together.”

He looked at her in surprise. It was a refreshing change. Genji would have argued; some of the others would have demurred but secretly agreed.

Echo took him at his word. She did not argue that he was likely more human than her, simply because he _was_ a human. She made no arguments for his soul, for what humanity may still be left in him.

She accepted his word—and accepted that they were both searching for that elusive meaning that lay beyond their reach.

He nodded, unable to trust his voice, and Echo turned back toward the sun over the water. With her politely averting her eyes—though he knew that they weren’t the only things she used to “see” with—he wiped away the stray tear that had tried to escape.

* * *

“I’ve never been to one before,” Echo admitted, looking around in wonder. She walked close to Hanzo, just shy of wringing her hands nervously. To better fit in, she was wearing a new set of armor designed by Brigitte—painted a plain grey with deliberate scuff marks to make it look like it wasn’t new—with her “fins” removed. She wasn’t used to walking for too long and occasionally tripped on the uneven asphalt, a relic of an old parking lot where the market was held.

Dr. Zhou bounced excitedly nearby. She had been the most vocal about her excitement to be able to go to the farmer’s market nearby, and once Hanzo had reluctantly admitted that he knew about the area, had begged for him to go along.

It was a shame that Agents Reinhardt and Tracer had been too recognizable to go along. They both seemed put out, at least until Dr. Zhou had promised to bring stuff back for them.

And, if the market hadn’t changed too much in the years it had been since Hanzo had been there last, he knew a few stalls that sold foodstuffs that they would enjoy.

But first, he had someone to visit and led Echo and Dr. Zhou down the aisles.

Julian saw him first and cried out. There was another change to his nametag: _Julian, he/him_. At first Hanzo didn’t recognize him but his eyes were still the same, as was their excitement, even if it was in a voice that had deepened since Hanzo had seen him last.

“Stranger!” Julian cried. “Have you found any avocados lately?”

“I use them as rocks,” Hanzo told him dryly. “You look different since I’ve seen you last. Did you get a haircut?”

Even their hair was different. One side was shaved; the rest was dyed an electric blue.

“A few things have changed,” Julian admitted. “How are things? How are you? Did you bring friends? I didn’t think that I’d ever see the day!”

Hanzo surprised himself by laughing. There was something freer about Julian. Now that he knew what to look for, he wasn’t surprised to see that there was a small icon of a rainbow flag on the edge of his table.

“This is Echo,” he said, gesturing to Echo who waved shyly. “And Dr. Zhou.”

“A pleasure,” Julian said, shaking their hands. “Are you enjoying the day?”

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Zhou said once Hanzo had translated the question for her. “It’s a beautiful day and I’m so happy to see a market like this!”

They lingered with Julian for a while, eventually retiring under the awning of his little produce stall to continue talking. Eventually he waved them off. “Go on, enjoy the market!” he exclaimed. “Don’t let me keep you! And you!” he gestured sternly at Hanzo. “You don’t leave me waiting for years this time!”

Hanzo bowed his head. “I will do my best,” he said dryly and Julian grinned.

Dr. Zhou tugged shyly on Hanzo’s sleeve, surprising since she had never approached him that way before. “Will you ask him where we can find honey?”

When he translated, Julian gestured further down the aisle. “Honey, raw honey, bee pollen, honeycomb. Very good,” he said in English. Dr. Zhou blushed. “I’m not very good at English,” he admitted to Hanzo in Italian. “But I at least know food!”

Laughing, Hanzo waved goodbye as they walked down the aisles of stalls. “I didn’t know you spoke Italian,” Dr. Zhou said. It wasn’t quite accusatory.

Hanzo shrugged. “I was expected many things when I was young. And I hid out here for a few weeks. That’s how I met Julian.” He didn’t say that Julian had to teach him how to pick produce. “He seems happy. I’m glad.”

“Oh?” Echo asked. “Was he not?”

Hanzo thought back to when he first met Julian. It was strange to think that the shy person he had first met was the same Julian he had just seen. “I didn’t realize it until now,” he told her. “But now it’s like a weight was lifted off of his shoulders.”

“Why do you think that is?” Dr. Zhou wondered.

Hanzo caught Echo looking at him. He wondered what he “saw” as an omnic versus what he—and Dr. Zhou—saw as humans. Some omnics had advanced optical and auxiliary sensors; some could see only about as well as a human, albeit one with much greater processing power.

She inclined her head—all she could do without her usual “face”. He was certain that she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Perhaps he found a better part of himself,” Hanzo suggested and realized that he wanted that as well. He wanted that ease with which Julian inhabited his own skin.

Though he didn’t say these thoughts out loud, he thought that Echo knew anyway—and he was amazed at how relieved he felt for that.

* * *

“I want to feel like I fit in my own skin,” Hanzo told her days later, when the two of them sat on the comm tower. She leaned against his shoulder, taking an almost-human pleasure in the closeness of another that understood.

“I hope you can find that happiness one day,” Echo said and didn’t say anything about the way he drank deeply from the sake gourd in his hand. Echo had gotten it for him some weeks ago as a gift, but both knew that it wasn’t anything as (relatively) mild as sake that was in it.

Hanzo sighed, mouth burning from spirits. “I hope you find it too.”

“Thank you.”

Together, they watched the stars, the clouds, and listened to the roar of the surf below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes we only want to feel like we have a right to inhabit our own skin.


	3. Chapter 3

Two months after Echo’s arrival, the infamous outlaw Jesse McCree wandered on to base.

Hanzo only saw him because he was once more repairing the relays on the comm tower. Except for Genji (who couldn’t work anything more advanced than a screwdriver) and Echo, he was the only one that was able to easily get up and down—and one of the few able to make such repairs that didn’t have a debilitating fear of heights.

One moment, there seemed to be empty walkway; a moment later there was a man hiding in the shade of an empty shipping crate. Hanzo tensed and seemingly sensing the change in demeanor, Echo let energy pool in her hands in preparation.

_One person_ , Hanzo signed to her.

She peered cautiously over the edge, moving slowly so that her movement wouldn’t bring the stranger’s attention. Then she relaxed all of a sudden and smiled over her shoulder at Hanzo. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “I know him.” Leaping off the edge, she cried, “Jesse!”

The man whirled and then Hanzo could more clearly see him, recognized him from his many Wanted posters scattered all over the globe.

They didn’t do him justice.

They also didn’t clearly note how dangerous he was. Hanzo watched in amazement as he rolled and drew an enormous revolver from the holster on his hip. Then, seeing and evidently recognizing Echo, he spun it back into place as if that had been his intention all along. It was one smooth motion—and Hanzo knew that if he hadn’t recognized Echo, if she had been a threat, she would have a bullet between her eyes.

Using her “fins”, Echo glided over to him and spun through the air, as excited as a dolphin greeting a ship. She gestured and Hanzo reluctantly climbed down, keeping the comm tower between him and Jesse McCree.

“—friend Hanzo,” Echo was saying as he moved into earshot. “Hanzo, this is Jesse McCree. he was assigned as a guard for Dr. Liao while she was creating me.”

That explained her familiarity with him. Hanzo struggled with a jealousy that surprised him. He bowed slightly to this scruffy man who looked at him with open distrust.

Hanzo could relate, though. He would expect a man with a $6-mil bounty on his head to be distrustful of every new person he met.

“I see you’re settling in fine,” Jesse McCree said to Echo. “I’m glad.”

“What brings you here?” Echo asked. “Why are you sneaking around? You received the Recall notice, after all. You’re welcome here.”

Jesse McCree looked uncomfortable. Hanzo wondered if that was what he looked like when he first arrived on base, as if he was one wrong step away from disappearing into the wind again.

He was surprised at how much it hurt to see.

_I trust him_ , Echo signed to Hanzo where Jesse McCree couldn’t see.

“Are you in need of supplies?” Hanzo asked. “Or were you just checking up on Echo?”

From the expression on Jesse McCree’s face, he hadn’t expected Hanzo to guess the reason for his visit—though Hanzo couldn’t tell which option it was. Hanzo turned, hearing voices echoing off the stone.

“I hear Genji,” he said needlessly. Jesse McCree tensed, his lips pressed into a thin line. “I will distract him so you two can catch up. You should be hidden by the comm tower.”

Hanzo walked quickly to the stairway and leaped down two landings, nearly walking to Genji. “Hanzo!” Genji said warmly. “There you are! Reinhardt wants to arm-wrestle you.”

“That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” Hanzo said flatly as Genji led him back toward base. “Why would I consent to arm-wrestling with a Crusader?”

“Former-Crusader,” Genji said glibly. “He’s old now. I’m sure you can put him in his place.”

“Ha!” he could hear Reinhardt cry across the hangar. “I’d like to see him try!”

Hanzo wondered if Jesse McCree would be staying. He realized that having another outlaw, one used to fight-or-flight, used to walking with one eye over your shoulder, would be…nice.

Reluctantly, he sat down across from Reinhardt and clasped hands with the Crusader. His enormous muscles were intimidating, but he wondered how much of that was working muscle—and what kind of strength that Reinhardt actually had. Given that his weapon of choice was a hammer larger and heavier than Hanzo, he was sure that Reinhardt’s muscles were stronger than they appeared, however impossible that may seem.

He realized that he was likely going to have to report to Dr. Ziegler afterwards and sighed to himself. It was worth it for Echo, though, and he braced himself.

* * *

Still nursing a sore shoulder—and a thorough scolding from Dr. Ziegler—Hanzo climbed back up the comm tower with a headlamp around his neck. One scolding had led to another: after Dr. Ziegler had scolded him for needlessly hurting himself, Commander Winston had scolded him for playing without completing the work he had promised to do.

Genji had tried to scold him for missing their planned dinner, but seeing the set of Hanzo’s jaw and the way he snatched up the headlamp and stalked off to the comm tower, he let up. They were both learning.

He found Jesse McCree and Echo sitting on the comm tower, the outlaw with his long legs stretched out in front of him. They both stopped talking when Hanzo climbed over the edge.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I need to finish repairs here. Commander Winston wants to send out the next communique tomorrow morning.”

Jesse McCree grunted and began speaking to Echo in a language that Hanzo didn’t recognize.

He had a nice voice, Hanzo thought to himself as he turned on the headlamp and began to make his repairs. It was nice to hear someone else talking, too—and it wasn’t in a language he recognized, so he could enjoy the sound of speaking without the pressure of following along.

As he listened, he found himself curious about the language. At first he thought it might be one of the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. When he heard Echo respond, he realized that it definitely wasn’t. He could hear glottal stops but the vowels didn’t quite sound right for the northern European languages.

Still, it was nice to listen to and he said nothing, listening to them speak while he finished the last repairs.

“Will one of you hold this please?” Hanzo asked, pulling out a zip tie from his tool kit. When he saw Echo and Jesse McCree looking at him, he nodded at the wires curling out of the panel. “Just hold them together, please.”

“How about _you_ hold the wires and _I_ zip tie them?” the outlaw suggested.

Hanzo nodded, giving him the zip tie and moving to coil the wires neatly together. Jesse McCree’s fingers brushed against his—one a metal prosthesis, one as rough and callused as Hanzo’s own—and Hanzo stared at the contrast of their skin.

There was no spark like he had always heard about, just a rasp of hot skin against his. It was hard to tell what was beneath that poker face, if it was something that Hanzo would find attractive.

Though…it’s not like he knew what he found attractive anyway. He wondered if he would ever find anyone attractive. If he was one of the non-romantic types, or one of the asexual types.

A part of him wondered if he would be upset if he was; the rest of him wondered why he was so quick to put himself into a neat little box with a nice little label.

“Who won?” Jesse McCree asked as he tugged the zip tie shut.

Hanzo looked up in surprise, remembering just in time not to blind the outlaw with his headlamp. “What?”

“Who won?” Jesse McCree repeated. “The arm-wrestling match?”

Unable to help himself, Hanzo snorted derisively. “German supersoldiers,” he cursed in Japanese. In English, he said. “I may be strong, but do you think that I could go against Agent Reinhardt?”

Jesse McCree gave him a crooked smile. “German supersoldiers,” he agreed in passable Japanese with a British accent. “Just wait until they try to get you to drink with them.” He tugged the zip tie tight and clipped the trailing end. “Done,” he said in English. “Now. Who around here do I have to fuck to get some grub?”

Startled, Hanzo laughed while Echo exclaimed in dismay. Jesse McCree held out his right hand to shake and Hanzo wondered as he clasped the outlaw’s hands if that spark was what he had been looking for.

“Let me _officially_ introduce myself, because I’m sure you already know who I am,” Jesse McCree said with another of those crooked smiles. “Jesse McCree. Call me McCree. Only losers call me Jesse.”

“Hey!” Echo cried, feigning offense.

Hanzo smiled. “Shimada. Hanzo.”

Immediately, McCree’s brows rose. “Shimada, huh? That must mean that you’re yakuza, or a certain little shit is your brother—in which case, _I’m sorry_ that you had to suffer with that.”

The dread that had risen in the back of Hanzo’s throat at the recognition of his name dissipated, replaced with suspicion. “You know Genji?”

“Worked with him a few times,” McCree agreed, sitting on his ass, his legs bent upward in front of him. If Hanzo thought that the outlaw was interested, he’d have thought that it was an invitation. “Probably the worst ninja I’d ever met in my life—and that includes those wackos in Wal-Mart costumes at Halloween.”

Startled, Hanzo laughed.

“Great guy,” McCree continued with that crooked smile that bared too many teeth for polite company. “Don’t get me wrong. But I can see how anyone’d wanna kill him. I was one of them for a few weeks.” Grunting, he got to his feet and stretched his arms over his head.

Hanzo thought that he looked like the protagonist out of a cheap airport novel. But novels like that never talked about pit stains and dried blood dotting one leg of his dirty, torn jeans. Hanzo knew that McCree wasn’t as dirty as he could have been—you cannot pass unnoticed in a modern town if you looked like a scruffy cowboy coming back after a month-long drive with no access to a way to wash—but he wondered what that kind of scruffy would look like.

Reaching down, McCree held out a hand to help Hanzo to his feet, which he accepted. He was slapped on the back and Echo was helped to her feet with more decorum. She had a peculiar smile as she looked back and forth between them, as if there was something that she saw that they didn’t.

Together they cleaned up Hanzo’s tools and climbed down—rather, Hanzo climbed down and Echo used her boosters to slow her and McCree’s fall. A meter off the ground, McCree ducked and rolled, leaping to his feet into a bow like some ridiculous gymnast.

More comfortable with the outlaw, Hanzo grabbed his head and shoved it aside. As he stumbled away, McCree laughed.

They found McCree’s duffel, which he had stowed on the side before scouting forward to gauge his welcome. Hanzo watched as the team that knew him greeted him. Commander Winston and Genji both seemed happy to see him, as did Brigitte who was immediately distracted by his prosthesis. 

Hanzo watched from the outskirts, his tools tucked under his arm. Echo joined the celebrations, having more familiarity with the team. 

As if sensing his unease, Jesse McCree turned and winked at Hanzo before submitting to a scolding from Dr. Ziegler. 

* * *

The feet of Agent Song’s MEKA were booming and Hanzo tried to keep from gritting his teeth. His head felt like it was pounding in time with Agent Song’s heavy footsteps.

“I should apologize,” Agent Song said, her voice sounding small and Hanzo realized that it was only because she was speaking for his ears, not through her mic. “I turned off my mic,” she added just as he came to that realization.

Hanzo tried to think of why she might apologize but couldn’t come up with anything. They had spent most of the match on opposite ends of the field and they only walked together now because Echo had dropped Hanzo off with Agent Song when his perch had been blown up.

“I’m sure there is no reason for you to apologize, Agent Song,” Hanzo said, taking an extra moment to turn off his mic as well.

“I was unfair to you,” Agent Song said a little churlishly. He could sympathize—apologizes hurt, and they were both accustomed to being right. “For the Pride mission.”

Hanzo struggled to remember it around his aching head. Then he remembered: the crowds, the rainbows and streamers and confetti. Painted faces and signs for hugs from strangers that served as proxy siblings, parents, grandparents.

“Specifically,” Agent Song said with some asperity. “For what I said about you.”

“If you said anything that upset me, I do not remember it,” Hanzo told her. “I’m sure it was warranted.”

Agent Song huffed impatiently, the sound nearly lost in the loud footsteps of her MEKA. “It wasn’t at all,” she said. “I was being rude—I was being _worse_ than rude. I made assumptions about you—and about your character—that were…that have since been more than proven incorrect.”

“I have no idea what you are referring to,” Hanzo told her with a heavy sigh. “Whatever it may be, you may forget it as I have already done so.”

“I implied that you were the type of person that would hate me,” Agent Song said snappishly. “The ‘ultra-traditional’ type, I believe I called you. This is the future and we like to think that we’re so far out of the Dark Ages but there are still people around the world that think…that think being trans is a mental issue. That I’m just a filthy cross-dresser.”

Hanzo thought about meeting the Shrike in the Egyptian museum. How she had told him to be careful.

He thought about how he had learned, as he researched Pride following that conversation, that Egypt, along with many other countries, still listed homosexuality as illegal—for some, the death penalty was still in place. The world had moved on from many other “controversial” topics of human rights, but this was still one that many held to be sacred law.

Even in Japan, he knew that it was severely frowned upon, mostly by the older generations. The younger generations were more and more progressive but there were still those out there that very vocally opposed same-sex marriage and other such rights. 

He knew now that Japan was considered to be surprisingly progressive. In its history, homosexuality was much more common—hilarious, especially considering the more “modern” interpretations condemning such practices. Then it was outlawed and then...something changed. Compared to other Asian countries, which still clung to its hatred of the LGBT community, it was close to accepting. It still had a long way to go, but it was still a few steps ahead of others. 

But it wasn’t without its pockets of hatred. Of those that were vocal of their hatred of people for their love, for the identities that they crafted for themselves. The Shimada Clan had been among those very loud voices and Hanzo should have been more aware of their duplicitous nature—even as they reviled homosexuality, they captialized on it by indulging in that “sickly vice” through various night clubs, casinos, gambling dens, and brothels. 

And now Hanzo wondered why. But perhaps, like much of his character before leaving, it was just a learned behavior. Hate did not exist in a vacuum—it was taught, much like tradition.

Many Asian countries were like that, still clinging to the traditions—and hatred—of the past. 

Many _people_ were like that—it was independent of the invisible lines in the ground that people drew to mark their territory.

Though he only distantly remembered her protests—especially given how his head hurt from what was most likely a head injury, probably a concussion—he could understand her fear.

“How do you know I do not think that?” Hanzo wondered. “Your…defense of yourself is understandable.”

Agent Song cursed to herself in Korean. Some insults to Hanzo’s intelligence were thrown in there as well, and Hanzo wondered if she was aware that he spoke Korean.

“If you did, you would not have been there,” Agent Song told him impatiently. “You would not have behaved as you did with those protesters, or with that little old grandmother.”

Hanzo very clearly remembered her, the softness of her old skin. How her voice had trembled—as if she was not the only one serving as a proxy that day.

They had hugged for a while, for longer than anyone likely expected them to. He had smeared his eyeliner and the little old lady had gently teased him about it, dabbing at it with her fingers until the woman holding the sign had handed her a tissue instead.

“How else would I have acted?” Hanzo wanted to know.

Agent Song cursed him again. “I’m trying to apologize,” she snapped.

“I’m trying to understand why you would be.”

More cursing in Korean. “I was wrong about you, okay?” she demanded. “I thought you were one of those monsters that like to tell me that me being trans is a sin or due to some mental imbalance or mental illness. But you’re not.”

Her engines roared and Hanzo covered his eyes with a hand as she flew. When he pulled his hand away, he found that McCree had joined him in the narrow alley. He jerked his thumb up at Agent Song’s MEKA.

“What’s up with her?”

Hanzo shrugged and winced as it made his pounding headache even worse. “She wanted to apologize for something she didn’t need to apologize for.”

Clicking his tongue, McCree stepped close and inspected Hanzo’s head, holding his face by his chin until Hanzo slapped his hand away. “C’mon, Ange is just around the corner.”

“She was…upset,” Hanzo told McCree quietly. “When I was listed on the team to work the Pride parade.”

McCree gave him an odd look. “Are cops allowed at Pride?”

Hanzo snorted and winced when it made his head ache. “I’m not getting into that debate,” he said. “We weren’t really there as police, either—but there were other security officials. There were threats—and displays of violence—among the protesters that planned to be there. The Commander volunteered some of us to be present just in case something was to happen.”

“Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh,” McCree said with a shrug and a curl of his lips. “Is that why Ms. Song was upset?”

“She was upset that _I_ was there. She says that she thought that I’d be the kind to hate her for who she was,” Hanzo explained. “So she apologized.”

“Wasn’t Pride like…months ago?” McCree wondered.

Hanzo shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I cannot—and do not—blame her for looking out for herself. She may be wrong, but she doesn’t know my thoughts.”

“You’re not what I expected, you know,” McCree told him.

Curious despite himself, Hanzo looked at McCree out of the corner of his eyes. “And what did you expect?”

McCree shrugged. “Someone with an even bigger stick up their ass,” he said with a loud laugh. “Maybe someone like the person that Ms. Song thought you were.”

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Hanzo protested. “Maybe I _am_ that person.” He thought about it, wondered about the little rainbow flower that someone had given him so long ago. He thought about the kind of world that he didn’t understand—Julian’s transformation, the innumerable patterns of Pride flags, of identities that he knew by name and little else; of unripe avocados, and old ladies teaching strangers how to fold clothes in a laundromat.

McCree chuckled. “I doubt that.”

“I only learned about…all of this,” Hanzo paused, struggling for the words. “I only learned about…identity—gender identity, sexual identity—recently.”

“And what do you think?”

Hanzo shook his head and groaned at the pain. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he grumbled. “That is…not that it’s not important, not that I don’t recognize that this is someone’s _identity_ , but if that is who they say they are, then why should I argue?” He huffed. “There are so many names and I don’t understand all of them but if someone wants to call themselves pansexual—“ unbidden, his thoughts turned to Lúcio and Genji wearing those colors at the Pride mission. He swallowed. “—or what have you, then it is none of my business.”

“Do you think that they have something wrong with them?” McCree pressed and Hanzo squinted suspiciously at him. “Humor me.”

“Of course not,” Hanzo said and then admitted, “at least, not for that. For choosing a name—or names—for their identities.”

McCree spread his arms with that crooked grin. “See?” he asked. “Progress. Tell me you wouldn’t have thought the same back with the Shimada Clan.”

At the name of the clan—even though it was his own family name—Hanzo shivered. _Like a goose walked over his grave_ , as McCree would say.

“I wouldn’t know what to think,” Hanzo admitted. “Identities like…like pansexual, asexual…they weren’t in the knowledge of the world that I was fed.”

McCree looped an arm around Hanzo’s shoulders. He made a face, turning his face so McCree couldn’t see it—he was tucked up into McCree’s sweaty side. “See? Look at that. Growth. You’re learning.”

Shaking his head, Hanzo elbowed McCree, wincing when he hit his elbow hard into McCree’s chestplate. The ass just laughed and let Hanzo twist out of his loose grip. He was immediately scolded by Dr. Ziegler, who declared that he had a concussion and would be required to sit beside her for the foreseeable future.

With a wink and a tip of his stupid hat, McCree left him to suffer.

It was just as well—he had a lot to think about.k 


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m not sure,” McCree admitted when Hanzo asked him later. Echo was stuck with the engineers, having accidentally blown her own arm off.

How that happened, Hanzo wasn’t sure but she looked so distraught when she told him that she’d need to stay with the engineers that he didn’t want to ask. So he had patted her on the shoulder, told her that he’d see her later, and at her insistence had gone out to find McCree.

The three of them typically sat on the comm tower and talked, but they needed Echo to help McCree climb up the steep sides—and for her to help them back down if they drank too much.

So tonight they were on one of the stacks of abandoned shipping crates, since that was something that was easy for Hanzo to climb and something that he could boost McCree up, though the outlaw cursed the effort it took to haul himself over the edge.

Mouth tingling from the burn of a cheap cigar and the bite of liquor—it was McCree’s turn to choose their vices—Hanzo had gotten the courage to ask.

“Bi, I guess,” McCree said after a thoughtful silence. He blew a clumsy smoke ring and took another drag of his cigar. “Or pan. There’s a whole—” he gestured vaguely. “—thing about bi/pan and all that. But one o’ those. Gender don’t matter too much I don’t think.”

“You don’t think?” Hanzo echoed, pouring them both more whiskey. 

With McCree’s arrival, Commander Winston had declared that the base was dry—much to everyone’s frustration. Hanzo had been surprised and more than a little amused to learn that one of the most vocal opponents to the declaration had been Dr. Ziegler. It turned out that she had some Very Strong Feelings about being able to have her alcohol.

As far as they knew, negotiations were still ongoing. In the meantime, Hanzo and McCree snuck their own stash in and they were pretty sure that Reinhardt was brewing his own beer somewhere in the base.

McCree shrugged. “I feel like it’s always changing,” he admitted. “I might fall into another category. ‘Cause I know if I like someone—that person don’t gotta be human or omnic, male, female, or gender-neutral.”

Looking out over the Strait, Hanzo considered that. He sipped at the whiskey and savored the bite.

“What about you?” McCree asked with a surprising amount of gentility. Hanzo looked at him suspiciously and he gave another of those peculiar hooked smiles. “I got the feeling that you’re tryin’ to figure it out, hm?”

Hanzo looked back out over the water and for the first time since he spoke to the Shrike, he told someone about the aftermath of the Pride parade, about the young woman that had given him the small flower token. How after he first learned about Pride, after he had first learned the words that had been kept from him, he tried to find one that fit him.

For his part, McCree listened quietly, pouring Hanzo more whiskey when he drained his. “It’s tough,” he agreed. “Some people…it’s not like it’s an easy thing. It’s not necessarily like saying ‘my favorite color is red’. Thing is though…just like your favorite color, it’s possible to change.”

“I don’t know where to start,” Hanzo admitted.

McCree smiled. “Do you like women?” he asked.

He thought back to sex as a young man. He thought of drunk women from the clubs his family ran and the women who slept with him in hopes of getting some kind of power from him. Over him.

The sex hadn’t been bad—he had certainly enjoyed it enough—but it had been...alright. “They’re…nice.”

To his credit, McCree didn’t _quite_ laugh at him. He took a sip of whiskey with that hooked smile that Hanzo was growing unfairly fond of. “And men? Are they ‘nice’ too?”

“I suppose so,” Hanzo said stiffly, feeling the back of his neck lighting up in a blush. He didn’t want to admit that unlike women, he didn’t really have the same experience with men. It hadn’t really been an option beneath the eyes of the Elders, of his father. 

Genji of course, had been able to have that luxury; Hanzo had not. 

McCree smiled and nudged Hanzo gently with his elbow. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “Are you interested in finding out?”

Surprised, Hanzo recoiled and nearly spilled his drink all over his lap. He coughed and looked back at McCree who was looking at him with amused grey eyes. “Finding out?”

“I found out that I like men ‘just fine’ when I was fourteen and in a gang,” he said. “Did it the old-fashioned way. Made me figure it out, though.”

Hanzo warred with pride and dismay and an aching need to know.

“You can say ‘no’,” McCree reminded him. “You can say ‘later’. It don’t gotta be now.”

“With you?” Hanzo asked and grimaced at how that sounded.

McCree chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll find many on base that’ll allow you to experiment,” he said gently. “Lúcio and Genji are together, or at least making eyes at each other—and Reinhardt’s only got eyes for one person, even if she’s dead. And Torb…” he gave a theatrical shudder and Hanzo grimaced in agreement. “Nah, Torb’s a good guy. Married. Bless her heart, but Ingrid loves him. I ain’t that kind’a man to break a woman’s heart like that.”

They both fell silent, staring out over the night. Hanzo took a long drink from his cup to fortify himself then turned to McCree. He swallowed; McCree smiled and gently cupped his cheek, drawing him closer. 

As a young man, he had kissed women before—he hadn’t been _that_ repressed—but as he had told McCree, it was...fine. It hadn’t been exciting, just a brush of lips. There hadn’t been the sparks that everyone said there should have been; there hadn’t been a consuming fire that drove him mad. At the time, he had wondered it was just another lie that he had been told, not realizing that the lies—most, if not all of them—had come from those he thought that he could trust. 

As a young man he had thought that kissing was ‘just fine’ as well. It had been a nice experience but little else. 

Now, though...now he felt that consuming fire that everyone had said should be there. It was only just a gentle brush of dry lips but it still sent a white-hot jolt of electricity through him; it wasn’t anything explicit and yet he could feel it burning in every vein. 

He moved his lips clumsily against McCree’s, feeling the rasp of his beard against his lips. 

“Just fine” was insufficient to describe how he felt now. 

McCree pulled back with that hooked smile, his grey eyes soft. “How was that?” he asked. “Not bad for experimenting at 40, huh?” 

For a moment Hanzo sat there, staring at McCree. “I’m not 40,” he said belatedly. 

Leaning back against the wall, McCree poured them more whiskey. “Well?” he asked. “What did you think?” 

Hanzo licked his lips. “I think...I need another try. Just to be sure.” 

A strange expression crossed McCree’s face. “Wait a minute,” he cautioned. 

Swallowing the lump that appeared in his throat, Hanzo reared back. “Oh,” he said. “I’m...sorry.” 

“Hold up,” McCree said after a long pause. He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Is this because you liked the kiss or that you like me?”

“Is there a difference?” Hanzo wondered.

A strange expression crossed McCree’s face. “Yes, it does,” he said in a sharp tone that he’d never used with Hanzo. “Did you like the kiss, or do you like me?”

Hanzo bristled. “It was nice,” Hanzo said, forcing himself to keep his voice level. “And I _must_ like you well enough if I choose to spend time with you.”

McCree gave him another unreadable look. He drained his cup, stubbed out his cigar—even though he still had a third of it left—and stood. “I best be going,” he said.

“Very well,” Hanzo said, deeply confused and trying not to let it show. McCree walked confidently away, jumping and rolling off the container they sat on. Soon his footsteps started again and Hanzo knew that it was deliberate, so that Hanzo would know he made it down alright.

Looking down at the abandoned bottle of liquor, Hanzo poured himself another few fingers and sipped it. The view wasn’t as nice without someone to share it with, the liquor and cigars not as enjoyable without someone to join him in complaining about their quality.

He wondered what was wrong with McCree, wondered if a kiss that sent sparks through him meant that he really was gay. Or perhaps he was bi, pan, or any of those other identities that he didn’t understand, didn’t have words for until he first learned about Pride from the Shrike.

In the end, he supposed that it at least confirmed that he was attracted to someone the same gender as him. He just wondered why that knowledge still felt so hollow.

* * *

“I haven’t seen McCree come by in a while,” Echo said a few nights later. She had joined Hanzo on top of the comm tower. “Is he okay?”

Hanzo shrugged. “I imagine he is busy,” he said, though he had been wondering the same thing. “You are improving,” he added, gesturing at the plate of food that Echo had made. He tried not to look at the other bowls of food that she had brought for McCree, which lay forgotten, steam condensing on the underside of the plastic wrap.

“Thank you,” Echo said faintly, looking down at the plates. “He hasn’t been around lately,” she repeated. “Are you…sure that nothing is wrong?”

Hanzo looked at Echo. “Do you think that something happened?” he asked. They hadn’t welcomed any new operatives lately, and there hadn’t been an announcement of serious work that needed to be done—especially not in the areas that McCree worked on base.

It was true that McCree had recently been deployed on mission, but Hanzo had been on that mission as well, and as far as he had been aware, McCree hadn’t been injured enough to warrant this…avoidance.

As soon as he thought it, he realized that it really was avoidance.

Hanzo couldn’t imagine why he might avoid them—and he was surprised at how much the very thought hurt. It hurt as if it was a physical pain and he frowned down at the _oyakodon_ that Echo had made.

“Did something happen?” Echo asked gently. “Do you know if he was hurt or…?”

“I don’t know,” Hanzo said honestly, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that that wasn’t entirely true.

Echo sighed and leaned against Hanzo’s arm. “I hope he’s okay,” she said. “Angela is worried. She thinks that he’s getting ready to leave again.”

Looking out over the water, Hanzo considered that. If McCree was pulling away, then perhaps he was.

They remained silent for a while and Hanzo forced himself to eat more of his _oyakodon_ even though he was no longer hungry.

“I’m supposed to go out again,” Echo told Hanzo later. He sat with his legs extended and her head awkwardly pillowed in his lap. “I hope he’ll still be here when I come back.”

Hanzo reached out and gently stroked her helm. He was still so awkward at touching others, at offering comfort, even to someone like Echo. She gave him a soft, if shaky smile.

“I hope he says goodbye if he decides to leave,” Echo said softly. “I hope he doesn’t leave.”

As soon as she said it, he realized that he didn’t want McCree to leave either. He wanted McCree to stay with an intensity that surprised him.

For a while they remained silent, listening to the distant hiss of the waves. “You’ve changed, you know,” Echo said quietly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed. But you have.”

“Have I?” Hanzo asked. He looked down and found her smiling up at him.

“You’re a bit more human,” she teased. “You’re not as afraid of being with or around the team. There’s something different about you that I cannot place. I’m glad to see it.”

Hanzo hesitated, wondering if he should tell her about what he had discovered. There was risk putting oneself out like that, but this was Echo.

He was surprised to realize that he trusted her, even with this. Even if he was wrong, he wouldn’t be upset to admit to that to Echo. 

“I think,” he said slowly. “That I’ve learned that I like men.”

Echo smiled up at him, rolling to kneel in front of him. “Oh?” she asked. “How did you find out?” 

Once more, Hanzo hesitated. Even now he didn’t want to admit it to Echo.

Echo, who he could probably trust more than almost anyone else on the base. One of the very few that had seen him on his own terms.

“I…tested it,” he said very slowly. Echo was eager to know, happy for him, but he appreciated that she didn’t push him, didn’t bombard him with questions. “McCree and I…kissed. To test it.”

A peculiar expression appeared on Echo’s face. “Oh?” she asked. “And did you decide that you liked it?”

Hanzo touched his lips and looked away. “I think I did,” he said, though it was a lie. Or perhaps it wasn’t _quite_ a lie—“like” certainly did not describe the electricity that had thundered through his veins at even the slightest brush of lips.

“Hmm,” Echo said and Hanzo looked suspiciously at her. “What did McCree say when he kissed you?” She made a face. “How did you go about kissing him? What led up to that?”

There was a strange kind of intensity in her expression. He thought that maybe it was just that she was excited—they were both trying to find their own sense of self after being shaped by another. She was an “echo” of her creator; Hanzo was a puppet who had broken free of his strings.

“I asked him about his sexuality,” Hanzo admitted. Despite the strange contortions her face was going through, Echo nodded encouragingly at him. “We had…kind of discussed it before but I hadn’t actually asked him about it.”

“And then?” Echo asked kindly when he paused. Her face seemed to have stopped glitching, though she had turned off the hardlight that formed her expressions. Now Hanzo stared at her “bare” helm which unlike her hardlight “face”, did not look human at all.

Hanzo frowned. “He answered me,” he said vaguely, not sure if McCree wanted such things discussed without his consent. “And he…offered to kiss me. So I could see if I liked men.”

“So you kissed him,” Echo said. “And you enjoyed kissing him.”

Hanzo hesitated. There was something in her tone that made him wary. It felt as if she was trying to lead him to some kind of answer. Though he trusted her, he didn’t like that she was trying to coax into an answer that she wanted to hear from him.

“Why?” he asked suspiciously.

Though she had no emotive face, Hanzo got the sense that she was looking at him with a mixture of exasperation and disappointment. “I think that addressing those questions—and whether or not those questions have different answers—will provide a piece of the puzzle.”

Hanzo very carefully considered that. “Do you think that there might be a difference?” Hanzo wondered. “I…enjoy McCree’s company. And I enjoyed kissing him. Why are these questions that you both need to know?”

“Did McCree ask you?” Echo asked. “If you liked kissing or if you liked kissing _him_?”

“He did,” Hanzo admitted reluctantly, because he could tell that Echo was trying to make some kind of point. “I asked to kiss him again and he asked if I wanted to kiss him or if I just liked kissing men.”

Echo hummed. Her body rippled with blue pixels, distorting her figure. When they cleared, a blue mimicry of Strike Commander Morrison sat before him. “Do you want to kiss me?” Echo asked in their two-tone voice.

“No,” Hanzo told her. “And I mean that with the utmost respect.”

“Are you talking to Commander Morrison or myself?” she asked dryly as her body rippled with blue pixels again. When they stopped their manic swirl, an imitation of Reinhardt—albeit a younger version with long hair—sat in front of him. “How about now?”

“No,” Hanzo said a little sourly. “Do not mock me, Echo.”

“I’m not,” Echo said, reverting back to her usual form. Once more she hid her face from him. “I’m trying to prove a point. Is it possible that you just like McCree? Did you not find Reinhardt or Jack attractive?”

Hanzo scowled at her. “What is your point?”

“My _point_ ,” Echo said, a little exasperated. “Is that I think you sent him some very mixed signals. That maybe when you asked to kiss him again, McCree didn’t know if you wanted _him_ or just a kiss with a man.”

Hanzo considered that. “What does it matter?” he asked at last.

“It matters,” Echo told him gently. “Because you are not the only person in this equation, Hanzo. What if you weren’t the only one that wanted another kiss?”

“Then why would he not ask for one?”

Echo paused for a long moment. “Perhaps he wanted a kiss in a different context.”

Hanzo froze. “Romantically,” he said. “You think that McCree may have wanted another kiss. Romantically.”

“Perhaps,” Echo said. “Consider how he acts now. Perhaps he is disappointed that you wanted another kiss for the sake of kissing, not for liking him.”

He had to admit that she had a point. Perhaps McCree’s pride was hurt—perhaps he had aimed for another result and Hanzo hadn’t played into his plans. Still, it was…frustrating. Why hadn’t McCree just asked him? Perhaps he should…

Hanzo frowned thoughtfully. Thinking of how he would ask McCree, he realized another facet to the situation— _what if he was wrong?_ Had McCree thought the same thing? Was that why his disappointment was so acute? Had his pride been hurt that Hanzo had not seen the same significance in his inane questions?

Echo got to her feet, her “wings” flaring out behind her like a cape. “Think about it,” she advised. 

He watched her glide away and looked down at the covered bowl she had left behind. 

* * *

Growing up in an environment where he wasn’t allowed his own space, Hanzo was a big advocate for not crowding anyone. If anyone showed the need or desire to pull away, he was always careful to allow them to. 

He told himself that was why he had allowed McCree to pull away so completely but now he wondered if that was just another lie that he told himself. Now was the time to rectify that mistake.

Unfortunately for McCree, Hanzo knew him, knew his habits. 

It took only fifteen minutes to track him down. 

“I must speak with you.” 

McCree squinted at him. “Why?” he demanded. 

“I believe that there were some things that we need to discuss,” Hanzo said evenly. “Things that were not discussed the last time we spoke.” 

Looking at him with one eye, McCree drank deeply from his flask. “I don’t think we need so,” he said when he was done. 

“I disagree,” Hanzo told him flatly. “You asked me whether I liked the kiss or if I liked kissing you.” 

McCree flinched. “What of it?” he grunted. “You made it very clear what you thought.” 

“I did not,” Hanzo told him. “Because I did not understand what you meant. Tell me, McCree...are you attracted to me?” 

He had been drinking deeply from his flask once more when Hanzo asked and he coughed, spraying cheap whiskey through the air. As he choked, Hanzo grabbed the flask from him and drank as well. He had the feeling that he’d need it for the conversation. 

“What makes you think I am?” McCree asked roughly. 

“You were upset that I might see no difference between enjoying a kiss and enjoying kissing you,” Hanzo replied, keeping his voice even though inside he was beginning to doubt. Perhaps Echo had been wrong. What would he do then? 

McCree’s poker face was superb even drunk, but Hanzo could see the cracks forming in his mask. “And?” 

There was a hint of hope in his voice and Hanzo hoped that it wasn’t just his own wishful thinking changing his perception of reality. 

When Hanzo didn’t answer right away, McCree gave a rough laugh. “So have you come here to lay me down easy?” 

“I took some time to think of what to say,” Hanzo told him. “But when I came here and saw you, I forgot everything.” McCree looked at him suspiciously. “I spoke to Echo,” Hanzo said, deciding that honesty would be the best answer to this, even if it was the more circuitous route to the answer to McCree’s question. “She asked me the same questions and helped me to understand my answers.” 

McCree grimaced and gestured for his flask back; Hanzo handed it back, relishing the gentle brush of McCree’s callused fingers against his own. “And what did you tell her?”

“I didn’t,” Hanzo admitted. “But I did think about it and I realized...that she was right.” 

Next to him, McCree huffed. “Look, if you can’t give me a straight answer, I’m just gonna leave,” he said. 

“Would it be a straight answer if I told you that I like you a lot too?” Hanzo wondered. 

McCree scowled. “If you’re going to be a sarcastic little shit—”

“I’m asking a sincere question,” Hanzo interrupted as McCree tried to scramble to his feet. “If I like you, more than as a friend, then would that be a ‘straight’ answer?” 

On his feet, McCree swayed. “I knew you were a cruel man, Shimada,” he snapped. “But I didn’t think you’d be quite as cruel as this.” 

Hanzo got to his feet as well. “Then let me spell it out for you,” he said impatiently. “I wanted another kiss because I enjoyed _kissing you_.” 

McCree squinted suspiciously at him. “Now don’t be playin’ my heart like this,” he warned. 

“I’m not,” Hanzo told him flatly. “I enjoy your company and the fact that I know that, of all the people on base, you at least understand me. I may not have the words to adequately describe how I feel but I’m trying.” 

Leaning back against the wall, McCree gave him a suspicious look as he took a long drink from his flask. Hanzo thought that he should probably stop him if they were going to have such an important conversation, but decided against it. He did wish that he had kept the flask, though—he could use the extra courage. 

At last, McCree sighed and held out the flask to Hanzo who gratefully took it and took a long drink. “This is all kinds of fucked up,” McCree said when Hanzo took a moment to breathe, gasping at the burn of the cheap alcohol. “Not how I expected it to go.” 

“How did you think it would go?” Hanzo asked. 

McCree shrugged. “Should’a remembered that you’re still learning,” he said, leaning against the wall again and letting himself slowly slide down into a sitting position. He gestured for Hanzo to join him. 

After considering the invitation, Hanzo instead chose to curl up in McCree’s space pressing his shoulder into McCree’s side. McCree laughed and wiggled his arm until Hanzo moved enough to free it; he froze when McCree looped the previously trapped arm around his waist. 

His touch was warm and did things to Hanzo. It felt as if a fire was lit in him, as if lightning had been rerouted through his veins. He was intensely aware of every centimeter of McCree that touched him, 

He realized that he was sitting rigidly, as if ready to bolt. As if he didn’t understand how to relax. 

McCree squeezed his elbow, tugged him closer and slowly Hanzo let himself melt against him. It felt alien at first but slowly Hanzo felt the warmth of McCree’s side melt the steel of his spine. 

Perhaps it was also the alcohol that let him fold tilt his neck to rest his cheek against McCree’s shoulder. 

“Don’t force yourself,” McCree said with a surprising amount of kindness. “You aren’t a ‘soft’ kind’a guy, Hanzo. I don’t expect you to be some swooning damsel.” 

Hanzo grunted. “And if I want to be here?” he asked. “Swooning, as you put it?” 

He could feel the smile on McCree’s face even though he couldn’t see it. It felt as if the very air became lighter. “Then by all means,” he said. 

Tilting his shoulder down, Hanzo found that he slotted nicely against McCree’s side as if meant to be there. It brought his cheek against McCree’s collar, which still smelled like smoke from a cigar that he must have been smoking before Hanzo found him. 

Hanzo decided then, as he basked in the warmth of McCree’s presence and the lingering, pleasant burn of the liquor, that perhaps names didn’t matter very much. Gay or bisexual or something else entirely—wouldn’t it just be enough, Hanzo wondered, to know that he desired such things with McCree? That he cared for the ridiculous American in a way that went beyond friendship? 

Yes, he thought as he felt McCree squeeze him gently against his side. Perhaps names—Shimada, McCree, gay or bi or whatever else—didn’t matter. Perhaps he could just be. 

Perhaps that would be enough. 

* * *

Fortunately, Echo knew them both and when she hadn’t heard them return from their talk, had gone out to find them. It took her even less time than it had taken Hanzo to find McCree and she smiled when she found them unconscious, curled up around each other. 

Smiling, she pulled McCree’s serape more securely around them and stepped back as McCree stirred. He tugged Hanzo closer, though they were already pressed together from shoulder to knee. She watched as Hanzo’s face, relaxed in sleep, pulled ever so slightly into a smile. 

She floated quietly away, laughing to herself. What a pair of idiots—but they were _her_ idiots. 

And she was happy for them.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be a much shorter (!!!) story focusing on a different aspect of identity but...the story took on a life of its own and honestly, I kind of like the way it decided to go. 
> 
> There is definitely more to this whole overarching story that I may write at a different date--especially since it will line up with what I had originally intended to write. But that is a story for another time.
> 
> Feel free to come and find me on Twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). 
> 
> ~DC


End file.
